NetApp Unveils Unified Data Storage Built for the AI Era
NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP) has launched the new AFF A-Series all-flash storage systems, targeting demanding IT workloads including AI, VMware, and enterprise databases. These systems promise up to 2x better performance, 99.9999% data availability, and advanced ransomware protection. Alongside, NetApp introduced six new StorageGRID models designed to enhance value and reduce costs for large, unstructured data. NetApp also unveiled new cyber vault architecture, SnapMirror Active Sync for uninterrupted data center operations, and BlueXP Classification for enhanced data intelligence. These innovations align with NetApp's strategy to offer unified data storage solutions that integrate with major cloud providers.
- Launch of AFF A-Series with up to 2x better performance and 40 million IOPS.
- 99.9999% data availability and 4:1 storage efficiency guarantee.
- Advanced ransomware protection with 99%+ detection accuracy.
- Introduction of six new StorageGRID models improving performance and reducing costs.
- New cyber vault architecture enhancing data protection.
- SnapMirror Active Sync for uninterrupted operations during data center outages.
- FlexCache with Writeback reducing latency and administrative overhead.
- BlueXP Classification enhancing data intelligence and compliance.
- Collaboration with Lenovo for high-performance GenAI use cases.
- High integration complexity with existing IT infrastructure.
- Potentially high initial investment and operational costs.
- Reliance on third-party technologies (e.g., NVIDIA GPUs) which may pose supply chain risks.
- Competition from other data storage providers with similar AI-ready solutions.
Insights
NetApp's introduction of the AFF A-Series systems represents a significant technological leap. The systems' ability to handle 40 million IOPS and 1 TB/s throughput is notable, especially given the increasing demands of AI workloads. These capabilities can drastically reduce processing times for data-heavy applications, enabling businesses to gain real-time insights and make faster decisions.
The integration of ransomware detection with a 99%+ accuracy rate is also a key selling point. Given the rising incidence of cyber threats, this feature offers an extra layer of security that can be important for enterprises handling sensitive data.
For retail investors, the technological advancements in the new AFF A-Series systems provide a compelling case for NetApp’s potential growth. A strong technological foundation can drive customer adoption and, by extension, financial performance.
From a financial perspective, NetApp’s new AFF A-Series systems could be a catalyst for revenue growth. The enhanced performance and security features are likely to attract new enterprise clients and encourage existing customers to upgrade, thereby increasing sales volumes and market share.
Furthermore, the company's focus on AI and hybrid cloud solutions aligns well with current market trends, which could lead to expanded business opportunities. The 4:1 Storage Efficiency Guarantee and always-on data reduction could translate into cost savings for customers, making the AFF A-Series an attractive investment for businesses looking to optimize their IT budgets.
Investors should consider the potential for increased revenue streams from these new product offerings, which could enhance NetApp's financial stability and contribute to its stock performance in the long term.
NetApp's strategic move to enhance its AFF A-Series systems positions the company favorably within the competitive landscape of data storage solutions. The integration with the top three public cloud providers and support for various storage protocols (block, file and object) makes the AFF A-Series versatile and adaptable to diverse business needs.
Given the rising adoption of AI across industries, the new systems' ability to efficiently manage AI workloads could attract a broad customer base. The partnership with Intel to leverage Intel Xeon processors further strengthens the product's capabilities, potentially driving higher customer satisfaction and brand loyalty.
For investors, these developments could signal sustained growth and market competitiveness for NetApp, making it a strong player in the data storage market. The company's proactive approach to addressing future AI needs could also enhance its long-term prospects.
Intelligent data infrastructure powered by the new AFF A-Series with integrated data services turbocharges AI and simplifies every workload at scale
In the AI era, organizations are feeling pressure to accelerate innovation, unlock new customer experiences, outsmart cyber threats, and gain ever greater productivity. Many organizations see AI as a critical tool to help them achieve those goals. According to the 2024 NetApp Cloud Complexity report, organizations realize that achieving business success with AI hinges on two critical factors, data (
The new NetApp AFF A-Series systems continue NetApp’s leadership in unified data storage for the next generation of workloads. Leveraging the same technology relied upon by the top three public clouds, the NetApp AFF A-Series eliminates storage silos and storage complexity, providing powerful, intelligent, and secure storage to accelerate and optimize every workload. This includes integrated capabilities to optimize VMware storage costs today and provide unmatched flexibility for the future.
"Data is undeniably the most valuable asset for any company to outpace its competitors. Whether it's mission critical applications or leveraging enterprise data to fuel AI, the data infrastructure a company chooses to run it on makes all the difference," said Sandeep Singh, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Enterprise Storage at NetApp. "NetApp's extensive, unified data storage portfolio, from on-premises to the public clouds, makes it the go-to solution for enterprises looking to have the robustness for the most demanding workloads. The introduction of the new AFF A-Series Systems is a testament to our unwavering commitment to delivering the most powerful, intelligent, and secure enterprise storage in the industry."
New AFF A-Series Systems to Accelerate Business Technology Operations
With the introduction of new, more-powerful AFF A-Series all-flash storage systems, NetApp is continuing its commitment to innovation with unified data storage systems designed for any data, any app, and any cloud. The new AFF A-Series storage systems easily power the most demanding workloads—from existing mission-critical apps to GenAI workloads that will drive success into the future.
These new systems are the NetApp AFF A1K, AFF A90, and AFF A70, which can turbo-charge enterprise workloads by delivering:
- Up to 2x better performance with unmatched 40 million IOPs, 1 TB/s throughput
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Proven
99.9999% data availability - Leading raw-to-effective capacity, including always-on data reduction and 4:1 Storage Efficiency Guarantee
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Integrated real-time ransomware detection designed for
99% + accuracy and Ransomware Recovery Guarantee
NetApp's unified data storage supports block, file and object storage protocols and natively integrates with the three largest public cloud providers, allowing customers to consolidate workloads, lower cost of data, and operate without silos. Powered by NetApp ONTAP®, these systems deliver the simplicity and reliability tens of thousands of organizations have come to expect from NetApp.
“As we’ve ramped up our investments in AI projects to help accelerate our business, we needed to grow our data infrastructure to deliver ever greater performance for those workloads,” Christian Klie, Tribe Cluster Lead at T-Systems. “We rely on intelligent data infrastructure delivered by NetApp to power our most critical workloads, and the increased power of the new AFF A-Series systems, paired with their integrated anti-ransomware features and hybrid cloud capabilities, will help position us for success now and in the future.”
“AI is creating the biggest business transformation opportunity we’ve seen in decades, allowing enterprises to unlock new sources of value from their data,” said Justin Hotard, Executive Vice President and general manager, Data Center and AI Group at Intel. “NetApp AFF A-Series systems utilizing Intel Xeon processors provide the performance and features to help businesses accelerate their enterprise AI adoption.”
Providing Powerful, Intelligent and Secure Enterprise Data Infrastructure
To continue its innovation as the intelligent data infrastructure company, NetApp released additional capabilities to provide customers with the advanced data management, industry-leading ransomware protection, and cloud integration that modern workloads like GenAI demand.
The new features and capabilities in NetApp’s data management and integrated services include:
- New StorageGRID Models: NetApp has introduced six new StorageGRID models that enhance the value of large, unstructured data while reducing total cost of ownership. StorageGRID can now leverage capacity flash to provide fast object access times at the lowest cost. Customers can experience a new level of flexibility, choice, performance, and sustainability for critical object workloads with new models that offer a very competitive price per GB, up to a 3X performance increase, 80 percent footprint reduction, and power consumption savings as high as 70 percent.
- Cyber Vault Reference Architecture: NetApp announced a new cyber vault reference architecture that extends the company’s industry-leading data protection capabilities. Combining the latest advances in secure data storage, autonomous real-time ransomware detection, and rapid data restoration, NetApp’s secure and resilient cyber vault delivers “logically air-gapped” storage based on proven NetApp ONTAP technology, for unparalleled protection of customer data against advanced cyber-threats.
- SnapMirror Active Sync: The latest version of ONTAP includes SnapMirror active sync which creates a symmetric active-active business continuity solution across two data centers. Coupled with VMware vSphere Metro Storage Cluster (vMSC) and enterprise databases from Oracle, SAP, and Microsoft, SnapMirror active sync enables ongoing business operations with no disruption during a data center outage.
- FlexCache with Writeback: The updated version of ONTAP also includes FlexCache with Writeback which creates local copies of data for distributed teams, resulting in reduced latency and uninterrupted access while reducing administrative overhead. The local copies can read and write data, granting local teams greater control while maintaining data consistency with the core data center.
- NetApp AIPod with Lenovo: NetApp and Lenovo are collaborating on a new converged infrastructure solution designed for retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and inferencing use cases for GenAI, with Lenovo high-performance ThinkSystem servers utilizing NVIDIA L40S GPUs, NVIDIA Spectrum-X networking, and NetApp AFF storage, all validated with the NVIDIA OVX architecture specification.
- BlueXP Classification: This AI/ML-driven service is now available as a BlueXP core capability at no additional charge, giving users immediate access to the ability to automatically classify, categorize, and tag data across the entire data estate to deepen data intelligence, enhancing efforts in governance, security, and compliance while enabling strategic workloads such as GenAI. With BlueXP classification, customers can now fuel GenAI and RAG innovation through the AIOps ability to securely and programmatically augment pre-trained models with auto-classified, proprietary data on demand for enhanced relevancy without sacrificing cost or data security.
“AI is a massive opportunity for companies to leverage their data in new ways to unlock competitive advantages,” Ashish Nadkarni, Group Vice President and General Manager, Infrastructure Systems, Platforms and Technologies and BuyerView Research at IDC. “However, as the AI market develops, how organizations approach AI may change. They need storage infrastructure that gives them the flexibility to combine their on-premises data storage with cloud environments. NetApp’s strategy of delivering powerful unified data storage that works with any data protocol, in any environment, to run any workload gives its customers the power and flexibility they need to face whatever challenges come their way.”
Join NetApp for a special event on May 14 at 9 AM PT to learn about its next major advancement in unified data storage, built for the AI era: https://netapp.com/
Additional Resources
- Unified Data Storage for the AI Era
- Embrace the AI Era with the New NetApp AFF A-Series Storage Systems
- The Leader in Object Storage Just Keeps Getting Better with New StorageGRID Systems and Capacity Flash
- NetApp AFF A-Series: High-Performing Unified Storage
- ONTAP: Data Management Software for a Better Hybrid Cloud Experience
- StorageGRID: Smart, Fast, Future-Proof Object Storage
About NetApp
NetApp is the intelligent data infrastructure company, combining unified data storage, integrated data services, and CloudOps solutions to turn a world of disruption into opportunity for every customer. NetApp creates silo-free infrastructure, harnessing observability, and AI to enable the industry’s best data management. As the only enterprise-grade storage service natively embedded in the world’s biggest clouds, our data storage delivers seamless flexibility. In addition, our data services create a data advantage through superior cyber resilience, governance, and application agility. Our CloudOps solutions provide continuous optimization of performance and efficiency through observability and AI. No matter the data type, workload, or environment, with NetApp you can transform your data infrastructure to realize your business possibilities. Learn more at www.netapp.com or follow us on X, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.
NETAPP, the NETAPP logo, and the marks listed at www.netapp.com/TM are trademarks of NetApp, Inc. Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240514820503/en/
Media Contact:
Kenya Hayes
NetApp
kenya.hayes@netapp.com
Investor Contact:
Kris Newton
NetApp
kris.newton@netapp.com
Source: NetApp
FAQ
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